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Friday, June 27, 2008

In closure, I call upon Pak Lah to release the Intra Ethnic GINI Coefficient figures. We need to know whether wealth are properly distributed among the Malays or are they still concentrated among a handful of UMNO Putras. So long as this negative trend continues, the Malays will continue to demand for the continuation of NEP and friction among the races will not improve.

And, I want to say that reduction of income gaps between different ethnic groups, as reported in the Mid Term Review, is hardly impressive. It’s expected, actually, considering the rate of wealth acquisition by the “elites” of UMNO in the last 4 years have even caused serious frictions among component parties of Barisan Nasional.In other words, such outcome is expected and it’s not even news.

(Picture Courtesy of Malaysiakini)RMK9 Mid Term Review report has been released. It was tabled in the Malaysian Parliament by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on the 25th of June 2008.

One of the highlights of Ninth Malaysia Plan, Mid-Term Review is the equity holdings of the Bumiputra. Apparently it is one of Malaysia’s most important economic indicator. It will spell out whether the National Economic Plan (NEP) will continue or be ended.

I, myself, am interested in another economic indicator, called Intra Ethnic GINI Coefficient, for Malays, specifically. What it is, is they are an indicator of how wealth is distributed among the Malays. The figure is between 0 and 1 where 0 indicates there are no gap between the rich and the poor while 1 indicates the rich controls all the wealth. Usually, the figure will be somewhere in between.

The truth is the government has stopped publishing the figure since 1990. This is because Dr Mahathir Muhammad, the PM at that time said:

“The NEP, it must be iterated, was not concerned with making all the bumiputeras earn equally, or share equally, the wealth distributed amongst them. …The intention of the NEP was to create in the bumiputera community the same division of labour and rewards as was found in the non-bumiputera communities, particularly the Chinese. … The equitableness was not to be between individuals, but between communities” (Mahathir Mohamad, 1998, The Way Forward - Vision 2020, A Working Paper Presented at the Malaysian Business Council, Kuala Lumpur pp. 33-34 )

In short, Dr Mahathir, then, has deliberately adopted a policy of not caring what is the income gap within the Malays. What’s important to Mahathir (and UMNO) is the rate of wealth ownership between the races as a whole.

It doesn’t matter if, for instance, 1% of Malays owned 90% of the Malay’s wealth, just as long as the Malays as a whole control’s 33% of the country’s wealth. This is the reason why corruption is rampant among the Malays. If such indicator is looked upon religiously by UMNO, naturally corruption would’ve been abated or at least controlled. This is because serious division of wealth will occur when corruption is not put in check.

For the Chinese and Indian community, how does this effect them? As long as the income gap between the rich and the poor among the Malays remains big, the Malays will continue to demand for the continuation of DEB. By right, NEP is supposed to have ended in 1990. But, because UMNO had failed, and miserably, I might say, it is continued to this day.

A look at whatever data we have shows that the gap between poor and rich Malays shows a widening trend. And considering UMNO did not adopt any new measures from 1990, I am confident that the gap now is bigger than in 1990.

Most Malays is not aware of this fact, but many Malays feel the effect of large income gap. That is why, despite the BN being very popular among the Malays in 2008, an average of 40% Malays voted for Pakatan Rakyat. If you compare the 2008 results with 1986 election results, it shows a jump of about 15% of Malays voting for opposition. In 1986, it is estimated only 25% of the Malay electorate voted for opposition.

In fact, in 2008, it was the high price of commodities that saved BN especially in Negeri Sembilan. The night when election results came out, I was putting special attention to Negeri Sembilan. Seeing that my kampong is Kampung Astana Raja, Rembau, I was also interested in the Rembau result. I regretted not coming back to campaign my family members not to vote for Khairy Jamaluddin.

When all results are finalized, we are 4 seats shy of a minority government in Negeri Sembilan. I got down and analyzed the results of Negeri Sembilan, and discover that seats won by BN are largely seats with predominantly rural electorate which relies on commodities for their economic subsistence, mainly rubber. My third cousin who live in Labu and sells second hand car for a living have been telling me that his business is booming because rubber tappers have started buying cars from him. And this was 2-3 years ago when the price of commodity was lower than in 2008.

So, naturally, the rural electorate is enjoying life because of the commodity bumper crop. But, if it wouldn’t for the rural electorate, Malays would have voted Pakatan Rakyat in the 50% neghborhood. That would have spelt the demise of UMNO and Barisan Nasional.

In closure, I call upon Pak Lah to release the Intra Ethnic GINI Coefficient figures. We need to know whether wealth are properly distributed among the Malays or are they still concentrated among a handful of UMNO Putras. So long as this negative trend continues, the Malays will continue to demand for the continuation of NEP and friction among the races will not improve.

And, I want to say that reduction of income gaps between different ethnic groups, as reported in the Mid Term Review, is hardly impressive. It’s expected, actually, considering the rate of wealth acquisition by the “elites” of UMNO in the last 4 years have even caused serious frictions among component parties of Barisan Nasional.In other words, such outcome is expected and it’s not even news.

"My education background is very technical so my writings will appear to be very much slanting towards facts rather than opinions. "

I wonder which Islamic University you come out from?

One of your recent posting in MT: "Well, before the Occupation of Airaq, there was no Sunni-Syiah tension. They were living side by side as neighbors and they've done so for the last 700 years. There wasn't even a trace of sectarian tension.

I guess it pretty obvious where the wealth have gone to and will go to in future.The cronies and those related to UMNO officers will obviously win the government contracts and tenders.And we all clearly know that with little or zero checks on these projects,non will complete with expectation.Take the public transport for example.We have been rated to have the worst taxi services.The rail-lines seems to links to nowhere.'imaginary bus-stops' where bus can simple alight or pick anyone.To make matter simple and easily understand of how wealth go,just see below.

Conclusion:The income gap between the UMNO malays and the Malaysia malays remain and instead grow wider.Then the UMNO malays will again come up with the same speech that the BUMI's wealth are still insufficient.

These have been happening and Malaysia Malays should do themselves a wake up calls.They should not wait for robbin hood,which in this case will only wealth himselve.

I therefore urge Malaysia Malay to take the step forward to willingly change the policies which will only spoilt the generations to come.We should be willing compete with other races without help because fair results only existed in fair game.Throw away the NEP and take other race successful stories as an example.MaY Malaysians be bless.

"Conclusion:The income gap between the UMNO malays and the Malaysia malays remain and instead grow wider.Then the UMNO malays will again come up with the same speech that the BUMI's wealth are still insufficient."

MY REPLY:I cannot agree more. Trust me, Malay equity will not increase much after this because in order to do that Malays must be able to generate their own wealth.

IF every contracts goes to cronies, how can the money be circulated and better still generate wealth

"Before the Americans came, THERE WERE NO SECTARIAN VIOLENCE" Where you get that fact from?

"The Shia suffered indirect and direct persecution under post-colonial Iraqi governments since 1932, especially that of Saddam Hussein. Under Saddam public Shia festivals such as Ashoura were banned. It is said that every Shia clerical family of note in Iraq had tales of torture and murder to recount.[46] In 1969 the son of Iraq's highest Shia Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim was arrested and allegedly tortured. From 1979-1983 Saddam's regime executed 48 major Shia clerics in Iraq.[47] They included Shia leader Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister. Tens of thousands of Iranians and Arabs of Iranian origin were expelled in 1979 and 1980 and a further 75,000 in 1989.[48] Shia opposition to the government following the first Gulf War was reportedly suppressed."

while i agree that intra race gap is a key indicator, you are misleading in your point suggesting that Gini figures have not been released since 1990. Every Rancangan Malaysia published the figures. Pls do take the trouble to check the RM( publications for the recent figures, 2004/5 if I'm not mistaken. Misleading statements like your is putting blogger in a bad ligt as far as the credibility game is concerned.

Just to prove my point, I actually took the trouble to look for it on the net... It took me less than 5 minutes to find it (Go to EPU website, RMK9 doc, Page 333, Table 16-3) The Gini figures are as follows:-